04 September 2010

Let The Music Play:
5 Music Apps You Can't Live Without

A recent report by Forester Research Inc. report, intriguingly titled "360-Degree Music Experiences" produced some interesting tidbits about music streaming services usage, including findings that despite the number of users accessing music streaming services on their mobile phones achieving unprecedented popularity, most people still listen to digital music on devices such their PCs.

"The music industry meltdown changed the rules forever, and digital consumers no longer want to pay for music. But they do want access to it and not just on their PC," said Mulligan Cloud music services, such as Spotify, which allow users to access their music from various devices are beginning to meet consumer demand for music on the go, according to Mulligan.

The rise of these services has been buoyed by the increased number of smartphones on the market, as well as improvements in mobile networks’ ability to handle the traffic required to support them. However, despite this trend these services are still confined to younger audiences and remain niche products.

"The ability to extend a music experience across multiple devices and locations is central to any music service that leverages the cloud. To do that well services must understand on which devices their target customers are likely to want to take their music experience," said Mulligan.

The survey found that listening to music on mobile phones is still heavily skewed towards younger listeners with 63% of all those listening to music on their phones aged between 18 and 24, according to the research. Clearly mobile music is here to stay, so why not get in tune with the future with these 5 kickin’ apps.

Spotify, the much-hyped Sweden's digital music service, has recently launched a mobile version of its streaming music service that allows users to access the music on the go on Symbian S60 devices, as the music service opens its mobile offering up to a huge new audience.

Spotify’s arrival on the Symbian platform, which has a global share of over 50% of all the world’s smartphones, follows Spotify’s launch on both the iPhone and Android-powered phones in September.

To get Spotify’s Symbian application, music fans can either download it directly to their phones by visiting m.spotify.com through their mobile web browser, or by entering their phone number on our new Symbian information page to receive instructions via an SMS.

For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, Spotify is a proprietary peer-to-peer music streaming service which is gradually gathering a large fan-base in Europe and allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums with almost no buffering delay. Music can be browsed by artists, albums or created playlists as well as by direct searches.

Those of you who are already familiar with Shazam know that application offers an instant satisfaction for those times when you want to know the song that is playing, learn more about the artist, buy the song immediately - or simply share your discovery with your family and friends.

Musical moments turned into memories and stories whenever and wherever you happen to be and linked to the one device that is always with you, your mobile phone.

From the launch of our first mobile-specific service, to help music lovers discover new music six years ago, Shazam comes of age and moves beyond music discovery by creating a new way for users to connect to each other through their music tastes and preferences.

With over 20 million customers using Shazam and more than 100 million tracks identified across the world, Shazam is rapidly becoming a global phenomenon. And by working closely with leading handset manufacturers and carriers we project that Shazam will be available on at least 250 million devices by the end of 2009.

The promotional limited version of Shazam allows Nokia users to:

• Identify music anywhere: from the radio, TV, film, or in a store by simply holding their Nokia towards the music and selecting ‘Tag Now’
• Buy music immediately when it’s heard: Tag details link directly to the Nokia Music Store giving users access to download the music they like
• Share the experience*: send tags to friends who share same musical taste via SMS
• Learn more about the music*: read track and album reviews and artist biographies plus find other music available from the same artist
• Options to find similar music: discover other music similar to the tracks users like, to enhance their music collection and knowledge
• Find out what’s hot and popular*: access Shazam music charts generated by millions of in country users

Shazam is available for Symbian OS, S60 5.0 devices including the Nokia N97 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and many Symbian OS S60 3.1 and 3.2 Nokia handsets including the popular Nokia N95 range and Nokia E71.

It used to be that listening to the radio meant listening to your local stations.

Not anymore. Nokia Internet Radio allows you to listen to Webcasts from around the world using 3G, Wi-Fi, and even GPRS networks.

With its handy radio station directory, you can browse by genre, language, or country, or go with the most popular stations chosen by users.

What’s more, if you can’t stop grooving to the song you’re listening to, you can follow a link straight to the Nokia Music Store and buy the track.

TuneWiki Lyrics Search is currently available at the Ovi Store by Nokia for all S60 devices, and is expected to be available for S40 devices in early October.

"We are thrilled to be releasing Lyrics Search and supporting the entire line of Nokia mobile products," said Amnon Sarig, President of TuneWiki, Inc. "Nokia is the world's largest handset provider, and we know its customers will be delighted by the way TuneWiki enhances their mobile music experience.

The new X6 is a phenomenal handset with strong processing capabilities that will allow users to enjoy the extensive functionality of the TuneWiki player. TuneWiki will make lyrics, one of the top searches on the internet, easily accessible to Nokia users in a way that has not been seen before."

The Symbian S60v5 Touch TuneWiki music player for the Nokia X6, N97 and 5800 handsets offers all the favorite functionality of the iPhone and Blackberry platforms and more. It is the first version to offer a "Follow Me" feature that allows a user's social network to see what that user is listening to.

The player also allows music videos to be viewed with subtitled lyrics, and the user can "blip" a link to his or her social networks to display the music being played.

Mobbler, Mobile Scrobbler, is a Last.fmscrobbler that works with Symbian S60 Smartphones. It allows you to scrobble from the Nokia s60 Music Player, both whist your listen to the tracks or you can store the tracks offline to be submitted later.

Speaking of the Last.fm, it is the UK-based internet radio and music community website, founded in 2002 and it is the now world's largest social music platform as they claims.

Using a music recommendation system known as "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations or on the user's computer or portable music device.

This information is transferred to Last.fm's database ("scrobbled") via a plugin installed into the user's music player. The profile data is displayed on a personal web page. The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user's favourites.